B. Second Division.
It was Locke who became the instrument of setting forth this entire manner of thinking in a systematic way, for he worked out Bacon’s position more fully. And if Bacon made sensuous Being to be the truth, Locke demonstrated the universal, Thought, to be present in sensuous Being, or showed that we obtained the universal, the true, from experience. From Locke a wide culture proceeds, influencing English philosophers more especially; the forms adopted by this school were various, but the principle was the same; it became a general method of regarding things in a popular way, and calls itself Philosophy, although the object of Philosophy is not to be met with here.
1. Locke.
When experience means that the Notion has objective actuality for consciousness, it is indeed a necessary element in the totality; but as this reflection appears in Locke, signifying as it does that we obtain truth by abstraction from experience and sensuous perception, it is utterly false, since, instead of being a moment, it is made the essence of the truth. It is no doubt true that against the hypothesis of the inward immediacy of the Idea, and against the method of setting it forth in definitions and axioms, as also against absolute substance, the demand that ideas should be represented as results, and the claims of individuality and self-consciousness, assert their rights to recognition. In the philosophy of Locke and Leibnitz, however, these necessities make themselves known in an imperfect manner only; the one fact which is common to both philosophers is that they, in opposition to Spinoza and Malebranche, take for their principle the particular, finite determinateness and the individual. According to Spinoza and Malebranche substance or the universal is the true, the sole existent, the eternal, that which is in and for itself, without origin, and of which particular things are only modifications which are conceived through substance. But hereby Spinoza has done an injury to this negative; he hence arrived at no immanent determination, for all that is determined and individual is merely annihilated in his system. Now, on the contrary, the general inclination of consciousness is to maintain the difference, partly in order to mark itself out as implicitly free in opposition to its object—Being, nature, and God, and partly in order to recognize the unity in this opposition, and from the opposition itself to make the unity emerge. But those who were the instruments of this tendency comprehended themselves but little, they had still no clear consciousness of their task, nor of the manner in which their claims could be satisfied. With Locke, this principle makes its first entrance into Philosophy in a manner so completely at variance with the inflexible undifferentiated identity of the substance of Spinoza, that the sensuous and limited, the immediate present and existent, is the main and fundamental matter. Locke does not get beyond the ordinary point of view of consciousness, viz. that objects outside of us are the real and the true. The finite is thus not grasped by Locke as absolute negativity, i.e. in its infinitude; this we shall not find until we come to deal in the third place with Leibnitz. It is in a higher sense that Leibnitz asserts individuality, the differentiated, to be self-existent and indeed objectless, to be true Being. That is to say, it is not according to him finite, but is yet distinguished; thus, each monad is itself the totality. Leibnitz and Locke hence likewise stand in a position of mutual independence and antagonism.
John Locke was born in 1632, at Wrington, in England. He studied for himself the Cartesian philosophy at Oxford, setting aside the scholastic philosophy which was still in vogue. He devoted himself to the study of medicine, which, however, on account of his delicate health, he never really practised. In 1664 he went with an English ambassador for a year to Berlin. After his return to England, he became acquainted with the intellectual Earl of Shaftesbury of that time, who availed himself of his medical advice, and in whose house he lived without requiring to give himself up to practice. When Lord Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor of England, Locke received an office from him, which, however, he soon lost by a change of ministry. Owing to his dread of falling a prey to consumption, he betook himself in 1675 to Montpellier for the benefit of his health. When his patron came into power again he once more recovered the place he had lost, only to be again deposed on a fresh overthrow of this minister, and he was now compelled to flee from England. “The act by means of which Locke was driven from Oxford” (what post he held there we are not told) “was not an enactment of the University, but of James II., by whose express command, and by the peremptory authority of a written warrant, the expulsion was carried out. From the correspondence that took place, it is evident that the college submitted itself against its will to a measure which it could not resist without compromising the peace and quiet of its members.” Locke went to Holland, which was at that time the land wherein all who were obliged to effect their escape from any oppression, whether political or religious, found protection, and in which the most famous and liberal-minded men were to be met with. The Court party persecuted him even here, and by royal warrant he was ordered to be taken prisoner and sent to England; consequently he had to remain hidden with his friends. When William of Orange ascended the English throne, after the Revolution of 1688, Locke returned with him to England. He was there made Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, gave to the world his famous treatise on the Human Understanding, and finally, having withdrawn from public office on account of the delicacy of his health, he spent his remaining years in the country houses of English nobles; he died on the 28th day of October, 1704, in the seventy-third year of his life.[214]
The philosophy of Locke is much esteemed; it is still, for the most part, the philosophy of the English and the French, and likewise in a certain sense of the Germans. To put it in a few words, it asserts on the one hand that truth and knowledge rest upon experience and observation; and on the other the analysis of and abstraction from general determinations is prescribed as the method of knowledge; it is, so to speak, a metaphysical empiricism, and this is the ordinary method adopted in the sciences. In respect of method, Locke thus employs an exactly opposite system to that of Spinoza. In the methods of Spinoza and Descartes an account of the origin of ideas may be dispensed with; they are accepted at once as definitions, such as those of substance, the infinite, mode, extension, etc., all of which constitute a quite incoherent list. But we require to show where these thoughts come in, on what they are founded, and how they are verified. Thus Locke has striven to satisfy a true necessity. For he has the merit of having deserted the system of mere definitions, which were before this made the starting point, and of having attempted to make deduction of general conceptions, inasmuch as he was, for example, at the pains to show how substantiality arises subjectively from objects. That is a further step than any reached by Spinoza, who begins at once with definitions and axioms which are unverified. Now they are derived, and no longer oracularly laid down, even if the method and manner whereby this authentication is established is not the right one. That is to say, here the matter in question is merely subjective, and somewhat psychological, since Locke merely describes the methods of mind as it appears to us to be. For in his philosophy we have more especially to deal with the derivation of the general conceptions, or ideas, as he called them, that are present in our knowledge, and with their origin as they proceed from what is outwardly and inwardly perceptible. Malebranche no doubt likewise asks how we arrive at conceptions, and thus he apparently has before him the same subject of investigation as has Locke. But firstly, this psychological element in Malebranche is merely the later development, and then to him the universal or God is plainly first, while Locke commences at once with individual perceptions, and only from them does he proceed to Notions, to God. The universal to Locke is, therefore, merely a later result, the work of our minds; it is simply something pertaining to thought, as subjective. Every man undoubtedly knows that when his consciousness develops empirically, he commences from feelings, from quite concrete conditions, and that it is only later on that general conceptions come in, which are connected with the concrete of sensation by being contained therein. Space, for example, comes to consciousness later than the spacial, the species later than the individual; and it is only through the activity of my consciousness that the universal is separated from the particular of conception, feeling, etc. Feeling undoubtedly comes lowest, it is the animal mode of spirit; but in its capacity as thinking, spirit endeavours to transform feeling into its own form. Thus the course adopted by Locke is quite a correct one, but all dialectic considerations are utterly and entirely set aside, since the universal is merely analyzed from the empirical concrete. And in this matter Kant reproaches Locke with reason, the individual is not the source of universal conceptions, but the understanding.
As to Locke’s further reflections, they are very simple. Locke considers how the understanding is only consciousness, and in being so is something in consciousness, and he only recognizes the implicit in as far as it is in the same.
a. Locke’s philosophy is more especially directed against Descartes, who, like Plato, had spoken of innate ideas. Locke likewise makes special examination of the “inborn impressions (notiones communes in foro interiori descriptæ)” which Lord Herbert assumes in his work De veritate. In the first book of his work Locke combats the so-called innate ideas, theoretic as well as practical, i.e. the universal, absolutely existent ideas which at the same time are represented as pertaining to mind in a natural way. Locke said that we arrive first at that which we call idea. By this he understands not the essential determinations of man, but conceptions which we have and which are present and exist in consciousness as such: in the same way we all have arms and legs as parts of our bodies, and the desire to eat exists in everyone. In Locke we thus have the conception of the soul as of a contentless tabula rasa which is by-and-by filled with what we call experience.[215] The expression “innate principles” was at that time common, and these innate principles have sometimes been foolishly spoken of. But their true signification is that they are implicit, that they are essential moments in the nature of thought, qualities of a germ, which do not yet exist: only in relation to this last there is an element of truth in Locke’s conclusions. As diverse conceptions essentially determined they are only legitimatized by its being shown that they are implied in the essential nature of thought; but as propositions which hold good as axioms, and conceptions which are immediately accepted as laid down in definitions, they undoubtedly possess the form of that which is present and inborn. As they are regarded they are bound to have value in and for themselves; but this is a mere assertion. From the other point of view the question of whence they come is a futile one. Mind is undoubtedly determined in itself, for it is the explicitly existent Notion; its development signifies the coming to consciousness. But the determinations which it brings forth from itself cannot be called innate, for this development must be occasioned by an external, and only on that does the activity of mind react, in order that it may for the first time become conscious of its reality.
The grounds on which Locke refutes innate ideas are empirical. “There is nothing more commonly taken for granted than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical, universally agreed upon by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant impressions which the souls of men receive in their first Beings.” But this universal consent is not to be found. We may instance the proposition, “Whatsoever is, is; and It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be; which of all others I think have the most allowed title to innate.” But this proposition does not hold good for the Notion; there is nothing either in heaven or earth which does not contain Being and non-Being. Many men, “All children and idiots,” says Locke, “have not the least apprehension of these propositions.” “No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of.... ’Tis usually answered, That all men know and assent to them” (the propositions) “when they come to the use of reason.... If it be meant that the use of reason assists us in the knowledge of these maxims, it would prove them not to be innate.” Reason is said to be the deriving from principles already known unknown truths. How then should the application of reason be required to discover supposed innate principles? This is a weak objection, for it assumes that by innate ideas we understand those which man possesses in consciousness as immediately present. But development in consciousness is something altogether different from any inherent determination of reason, and therefore the expression innate idea is undoubtedly quite wrong. Innate principles must be found “clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in children and illiterate people, who have received least impression from foreign opinion.” Locke gives further reasons of a similar nature, more especially employing those which are of a practical kind—the diversity in moral judgments, the case of those who are utterly wicked and depraved, devoid of sense of right or conscience.[216]
b. In the second book Locke goes on to the next stage, to the origin of ideas, and seeks to demonstrate this process from experience—this is the main object of his efforts. The reason that the positive point of view which he opposes to any derivation from within, is so false, is that he derives his conceptions only from outside and thus maintains Being-for-another, while he quite neglects the implicit. He says: “Every man being conscious to himself, that he thinks; and that which his mind is applied about, while thinking, being the ideas that are there; ’tis past doubt, that men have in their minds several ideas, such as those expressed in the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others.” Idea here signifies both the ordinary conception and thought; we understand something quite different by the word idea. “It is in the first place then to be inquired, how he comes by them” (these ideas)? Innate ideas have already been refuted. “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?... To this I answer in a word, from Experience: in that all our knowledge is founded.”[217]
As to the question in point we must in the first place say that it is true that man commences with experience if he desires to arrive at thought. Everything is experienced, not merely what is sensuous, but also what excites and stimulates my mind. Consciousness thus undoubtedly obtains all conceptions and Notions from experience and in experience; the only question is what we understand by experience. In a usual way when this is spoken of the idea of nothing particular is conveyed; we speak of it as of something quite well known. But experience is nothing more than the form of objectivity; to say that it is something which is in consciousness means that it has objective form for consciousness or that consciousness experiences it, it sees it as an objective. Experience thus signifies immediate knowledge, perception, i.e. I myself must have and be something, and the consciousness of what I have and am is experience. Now there is no question as to this, that whatever we know, of whatever kind it may be, must be experienced, that rests in the conception of the thing. It is absurd to say that one knows anything which is not in experience. I undoubtedly know men, for instance, from experience, without requiring to have seen them all, for I have, as man, activity and will, a consciousness respecting what I am and what others are. The rational exists, i.e. it is as an existent for consciousness, or this last experiences it; it must be seen and heard, it must be there or have been there as a phenomenon in the world. This connection of universal with objective is however in the second place not the only form, that of the implicit is likewise absolute and essential—that is, the apprehension of what is experienced or the abrogation of this apparent other-being and the knowledge of the necessity of the thing through itself. It is now quite a matter of indifference whether anything is accepted as something experienced, as a succession of empirical ideas, if one may so say, or conceptions; or whether the succession is a succession of thoughts, i.e. implicitly existent.
Locke treats of the various kinds of these ideas imperfectly and empirically merely.
α. According to Locke simple ideas arise partly from outward, and partly from inward experience. For experiences, he says, are in the first place sensations; the other side is reflection, the inward determinations of consciousness.[218] From sensation, from the organs of sight for instance, the conceptions of colour, light, etc., arise; there further arises from outward experience the idea of impenetrability, of figure, rest, motion and such like. From reflections come the ideas of faith, doubt, judgment, reasoning, thinking, willing, etc.; from both combined, pleasure, pain, etc. This is a very commonplace account of the matter.
β. After Locke has presupposed experience, he goes on to say that it is the understanding which now discovers and desires the universal—the complex ideas. The Bishop of Worcester made the objection that “If the idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of substance which comes not in by sensation or reflection.” Locke replies: “General ideas come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding. The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their rise. “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is wholly passive, and receives them all from the existence and operation of things, such as sensation or reflection offers them, without being able to make any one idea.” But “the mind often exercises an active power in making these several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas it can put them together in several combinations.” According to Locke therefore thought itself is not the essence of the soul, but one of its powers and manifestations. He maintains thought to be existent in consciousness as conscious thought, and thus brings it forward as a fact in his experience, that we do not always think. Experience demonstrates dreamless sleep when the sleep is profound. Locke quotes the example of a man who remembered no dream until he had reached his twenty-fifth year. It is as in the Xenien,—[219]
Oft schon war ich, und hab’ wirklich an gar nichts gedacht.
That is to say, my object is not a thought. But sensuous perception and recollection are thought, and thought is truth.[220] Locke, however, places the reality of the understanding only in the formal activity of constituting new determinations from the simple conceptions received by means of perception, through their comparison and the combination of several into one; it is the apprehension of the abstract sensations which are contained in the objects. Locke likewise distinguishes (Bk. II. chap. xi. § 15-17) between pure and mixed modes. Pure modes are simple determinations such as power, number, infinitude; in such expressions as causality we reach, on the other hand, a mixed mode.
Locke now explains in detail the manner in which the mind, from the simple ideas of experience, reaches more complex ideas; but this derivation of general determinations from concrete perception is most unmeaning, trivial, tiresome and diffuse; it is entirely formal, an empty tautology. For instance we form the general conception of space from the perception of the distance of bodies by means of sight and feeling.[221] Or in other words, we perceive a definite space, abstract from it, and then we have the conception of space generally; the perception of distances gives us conceptions of space. This however is no deduction, but only a setting aside of other determinations; since distance itself is really space, mind thus determines space from space. Similarly we reach the notion of time through the unbroken succession of conceptions during our waking moments,[222] i.e. from determinate time we perceive time in general. Conceptions follow one another in a continual succession; if we set aside the particular element that is present we thereby receive the conception of time. Substance (which Locke does not accept in so lofty a sense as Spinoza), a complex idea, hence arises from the fact that we often perceive simple ideas such as blue, heavy, etc., in association with one another. This association we represent to ourselves as something which so to speak supports these simple ideas, or in which they exist.[223] Locke likewise deduces the general conception of power.[224] The determinations of freedom and necessity, cause and effect, are then derived in a similar way. “In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe, that several particulars, both qualities and substance, begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect,” for instance when wax is melted by the fire.[225] Locke goes on to say: “Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the actions of the man, which every one finds in himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity.”[226]
We may say that nothing can be more superficial than this derivation of ideas. The matter itself, the essence, is not touched upon at all. A determination is brought into notice which is contained in a concrete relationship; hence the understanding on the one hand abstracts and on the other establishes conclusions. The basis of this philosophy is merely to be found in the transference of the determinate to the form of universality, but it was just this fundamental essence that we had to explain. As to this Locke confesses of space, for example, that he does not know what it really is.[227] This so-called analysis by Locke of complex conceptions, and his so-called explanation of the same, has, on account of its uncommon clearness and lucidity of expression, found universal acceptance. For what can be clearer than to say that we have the notion of time because we perceive time, if we do not actually see it, and that we conceive of space because we see it? The French have accepted this most readily and they have carried it further still; their Idéologie contains nothing more nor less.
γ. When Locke starts by saying that everything is experience and we abstract for ourselves from this experience general conceptions regarding objects and their qualities, he makes a distinction in respect of external qualities which was before this made by Aristotle (De anima, II. 6), and which we likewise met with in Descartes (supra, pp. 245, 246). That is to say, Locke distinguishes between primary and secondary qualities; the first pertain to the objects themselves in truth, the others are not real qualities, but are founded on the nature of the organs of sensation. Primary qualities are mechanical, like extension, solidity, figure, movement, rest; these are qualities of the corporeal, just as thought is the quality of the spiritual. But the determinations of our individual feelings such as colours, sounds, smells, taste, etc., are not primary.[228] In Descartes’ case this distinction has however another form, for the second class of these determinations is defined by him in such a way as that they do not constitute the essence of body, while Locke says that they exist for sensation, or fall within existence as it is for consciousness. Locke, however, no doubt reckons figure, etc., as still pertaining to reality, but by so doing nothing is ascertained as to the nature of body. In Locke a difference here appears between the implicit and being ‘for-another,’ in which he declares the moment of ‘for-another’ to be unreal—and yet he sees all truth in the relation of ‘for-another’ only.
c. Since the universal as such, the idea of species, is, according to Locke, merely a product of our mind, which is not itself objective, but relates merely to objects which are germane to it, and from which the particular of qualities, conditions, time, place, etc., are separated, Locke distinguishes essences into real essences and nominal essences; the former of these express the true essence of things, while species on the other hand are mere nominal essences which no doubt express something which is present in the objects, but which do not exhaust these objects. They serve to distinguish species for our knowledge, but the real essence of nature we do not know.[229] Locke gives good reasons for species being nothing in themselves—for their not being in nature, or absolutely determined—instancing in exemplification the production of monstrosities (Bk. III. chap. iii. § 17): were species absolute no monster would be born. But he overlooks the fact that since it pertains to species to exist, it thereby likewise enters into relationship with other determinations; thus that is the sphere in which individual things operate upon one another, and may hence be detrimental to the existence of the species. Locke thus argues just as one would who wished to prove that the good does not exist in itself, because there are likewise evil men, that the circle does not exist absolutely in nature, because the circumference of a tree, for example, represents a very irregular circle, or because I draw a circle badly. Nature just signifies the lack of power to be perfectly adequate to the Notion; it is only in spirit that the Notion has its true existence. To say that species are nothing in themselves, that the universal is not the essential reality of nature, that its implicit existence is not the object of thought, is tantamount to saying that we do not know real existence: it is the same litany which has since been so constantly repeated that we are tired of listening to it:
Das Innere der Natur kennt kein erschaffener Geist,
and which goes on until we have perceived that Being-for-another, perception, is not implicit; a point of view which has not made its way to the positive position that the implicit is the universal. Locke is far back in the nature of knowledge, further back than Plato, because of his insistence on Being-for-another.
It is further noteworthy that from the sound understanding Locke argues (Vol. III. Bk. IV. chap. vii. § 8-11) against universal propositions or axioms such as that A = A, i.e. if anything is A it cannot be B. He says they are superfluous, of very little use or of no use at all, for nobody yet has built up a science on a proposition which asserts a contradiction. From such the true may be proved as easily as the false; they are tautological. What Locke has further achieved in respect of education, toleration, natural rights or universal state-right, does not concern us here, but has to do with general culture.
This is the philosophy of Locke, in which there is no trace of speculation. The great end of Philosophy, which is to know the truth, is in it sought to be attained in an empiric way; it thus indeed serves to draw attention to general determinations. But such a philosophy not only represents the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, to which all the determinations of its thought appear as if given, humble as it is in the oblivion of its activity, but in this method of derivation and psychological origination that which alone concerns Philosophy, the question of whether these thoughts and relationships have truth in and for themselves, is not present at all, inasmuch as the only object aimed at is to describe the manner in which thought accepts what is given to it. It may be held with Wolff that it is arbitrary to begin with concrete conceptions, as when our conception of identity is made to take its origin from such things as blue flowers and the blue heavens. One can better begin directly from universal conceptions and say that we find in our consciousness the conceptions of time, cause and effect; these are the later facts of consciousness. This method forms the basis of the Wolffian system of reasoning, only here we must still distinguish amongst the different conceptions those that are to be regarded as most essential; in Locke’s philosophy, this distinction cannot really be said to come under consideration. From this time, according to Locke, or in this particular aspect of Philosophy, there is a complete and entire change in the point of view adopted; the whole interest is limited to the form in which the objective, or individual sensations, pass into the form of conceptions. In the case of Spinoza and Malebranche, we undoubtedly likewise saw that it was made a matter of importance to recognize this relation of thought to what is sensuously perceived, and thus to know it as falling into relation, as passing into the relative; the main question hence was: How are the two related? But the question was answered to the effect that it is only this relation for itself that constitutes the point of interest, and this relation itself as absolute substance is thus identity, the true, God, it is not the related parts. The interest does not lie in the related parts; the related parts as one-sided are not the existent, presupposed and permanently established, they are accidental merely. But here the related sides, the things and the subject, have their proper value, and they are presupposed as having this value. Locke’s reasoning is quite shallow; it keeps entirely to the phenomenal, to that which is, and not to that which is true.
There is another question however: Are these general determinations absolutely true? And whence come they not alone into my consciousness, into my mind and understanding, but into the things themselves? Space, cause, effect, etc., are categories. How do these categories come into the particular? How does universal space arrive at determining itself? This point of view, the question whether these determinations of the infinite, of substance, etc., are in and for themselves true, is quite lost sight of. Plato investigated the infinite and the finite, Being and the determinate, etc., and pronounced that neither of these opposites is of itself true; they are so only as together constituting an identity, wherever the truth of this content may come from. But here the truth as it is in and for itself is entirely set aside and the nature of the content itself is made the main point. It does not matter whether the understanding or experience is its source, for the question is whether this content is in itself true. With Locke, the truth merely signifies the harmony of our conceptions with things; here relation is alone in question, whether the content is an objective thing or a content of the ordinary conception. But it is quite another matter to investigate the content itself, and to ask, “Is this which is within us true?” We must not dispute about the sources, for the Whence, the only important point to Locke, does not exhaust the whole question. The interest of the content in and for itself wholly disappears when that position is taken up, and thereby the whole of what is aimed at by Philosophy is given up. On the other hand, when thought is from the beginning concrete, when thought and the universal are synonymous with what is set before us, the question of the relation of the two which have been separated by thought is destitute of interest and incomprehensible. How does thought overcome the difficulties which itself has begotten? Here with Locke none at all have been begotten and awakened. Before the need for reconciliation can be satisfied, the pain of disunion must be excited.
The philosophy of Locke is certainly very comprehensible, but for that very reason it is likewise a popular philosophy to which the whole of the English philosophy as it exists at this day is allied; it is the thinking method of regarding things which is called philosophy carried to its perfection, the form which was introduced into the science which then took its rise in Europe. This is an important moment in culture; the sciences in general and specially the empiric sciences have to ascribe their origin to this movement. To the English, Philosophy has ever signified the deduction of experiences from observations; this has in a one-sided way been applied to physical and economic subjects. General principles of political economy such as free-trade in the present day, and all matters which rest on thinking experience, the knowledge of whatever reveals itself in this sphere as necessary and useful, signifies philosophy to the English (Vol. I. pp. 57, 58). The scholastic method of starting from principles and definitions has been rejected. The universal, laws, forces, universal matter, etc., have in natural science been derived from perceptions; thus to the English, Newton is held to be the philosopher κατ’ ἐξοχήν. The other side is that in practical philosophy regarding society or the state, thought applies itself to concrete objects such as the will of the prince, subjects and their ends and personal welfare. Inasmuch as we have an object such as that before us, the indwelling and essential universal is made evident; it must, however, be made clear which conception is the one to which the others must yield. It is in this way that rational politics took their rise in England, because the institutions and government peculiar to the English led them specially and in the first place to reflection upon their inward political and economic relationships. Hobbes must be mentioned as an exemplification of this fact. This manner of reasoning starts from the present mind, from what is our own, whether it be within or without us, since the feelings which we have, the experiences which fall directly within us, are the principles. This philosophy of reasoning thought is that which has now become universal, and through which the whole revolution in the position taken up by mind has come to pass.
2. Hugo Grotius.
Hugo Grotius was studying the laws of nations at the same time as Locke; and in him the very same methods may be found as those already mentioned, inasmuch as he also falls into a quite empirical system of associating nations with one another, combining with that an empirical mode of reasoning. Hugo van Groot, born 1583 at Delft, was a lawyer, fiscal general, and council pensionary; in 1619, however, he was implicated in the Barneveldt trial, and was compelled to fly the country. For a long time he remained in France, but in 1634 he entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1635 he was made Swedish ambassador in Paris, and in 1645 he died at Rostock, while on a journey from Stockholm to Holland.[230] His principal work, De jure belli et pacis, he composed in 1625; now it is not read, but at one time it exercised a very great and important influence. In it Grotius presented a comparative historical account, the material of which was partly derived from the Old Testament, of the manner in which nations in the various relationships of war and peace have acted towards one another, and what usages they held to be binding. The following may serve as an example of his empirical method of reasoning: Prisoners ought not to be killed; for the object is to disarm the enemy, and if this end be attained nothing further should be done.[231] This empirical way of connecting facts had the effect of bringing general comprehensible and rational principles into consciousness, of making them recognized, and of causing them to be more or less acceptable. Thus we see principles set forth, respecting the righteousness of a king’s power for instance; for thought applied itself to everything. We are unsatisfied by such proofs and deductions, but we must not overlook what is thereby accomplished; and this is the establishment of principles which have their ultimate confirmation in the objects themselves, in mind and thought.
3. Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes, who was celebrated and distinguished on account of the originality of his views, was tutor to the Earl of Devonshire; he was born in 1588 at Malmesbury, and died in 1679.[232] As a contemporary of Cromwell, he found in the events of that time, in the Revolution which then took place in England, an occasion for reflecting on the principles of state and law, and in fact he succeeded in making his way to quite original conceptions. He wrote much, including a treatise on Philosophy, entitled “The Elements of Philosophy.” The first section (Sectio) of this work, De corpore, appeared in London in 1655; in it he first of all treats of Logic (Pars I.), and secondly of philosophia prima (Pars II.); this last is an ontology and metaphysic. The next sub-division (Pars III.), “On the relation between motion and magnitude,” is a system of mechanism, a quite popular system of physics; and a study of the human organs. The second section was to treat of the nature of man (De homine), and the third of the state (De cive), but the intellectual sections of the work Hobbes did not entirely finish. He says in his preface that Copernicus first opened up astronomy, and Galileo physics, before them there was nothing certain in either science. Harvey worked out the science of the human body, and physics generally as well as astronomy were perfected by Keppler. All this was termed Philosophy, in accordance with the point of view which has been already given (p. 313), since in it the reflective understanding desires to know the universal. Hobbes further says concerning the philosophy of the state (philosophia civilis), that it only dates from the publication of his book De cive.[233] This work, which appeared at Paris in 1642,[234] is, like his Leviathan, a much decried book; the second mentioned writing was forbidden to be circulated, and is hence very rare. Both works contain sounder reflections on the nature of society and government than many now in circulation. Society, the state, is to Hobbes absolutely pre-eminent, it is the determining power without appeal as regards law and positive religion and their external relations; and because he placed these in subjection to the state, his doctrines were of course regarded with the utmost horror. But there is nothing speculative or really philosophic in them, and there is still less in Hugo Grotius.
Before this ideals were set before us, or Holy Scripture or positive law was quoted as authoritative. Hobbes, on the contrary, sought to derive the bond which holds the state together, that which gives the state its power, from principles which lie within us, which we recognize as our own. In this way two opposite principles arise. The first is the passive obedience of subjects, the divine authority of rulers, whose will is absolute law, and is itself elevated above all other law. All this is represented in close connection with religion, and proved by examples from the Old Testament, by such stories as those of Saul and David. Criminal and marriage laws, too, for long derived their character from the Mosaic laws, or, speaking generally, from those the provisions of which possessed their value by the fact of being established by express divine command. On the other hand we have in the second place the reasoning wherein we ourselves are the determining agents, and which was called sound reason. In the movement which Cromwell made use of there was allied with this a fanaticism, which from the written letter drew opposite conclusions to the above, and this we see exemplified in the equality of property, for instance. Hobbes, it is true, likewise maintained passive obedience, the absolute freedom of the royal will and power; but at the same time he sought to derive the principles of monarchical power, etc., from universal determinations. The views that he adopts are shallow and empirical, but the reasons he gives for them, and the propositions he makes respecting them, are original in character, inasmuch as they are derived from natural necessities and wants.
Hobbes maintained that “The origin of all society is to be found in the mutual fear of all its members;” it is hence a phenomenon in consciousness. “Each association is thus formed in its own interest or for its own renown, that is, from selfish motives.” All such matters as security of life, property, and enjoyment, are not to be found outside it. “But men have in all dissimilarity of strength a natural similarity as well.” This Hobbes proves by a characteristic reason, viz. that “each individual can make away with the other,” each is the ultimate power over the others. “Each can be supreme.”[235] Thus their similarity is not derived from the greatest strength; it is not, as in modern times, founded on the freedom of the spirit, or on an equality of merit and independence, but on the equal weakness of mankind; each man is weak as regards others.
b. Hobbes further takes up the position that this natural condition is of such a nature that all possess the desire to rule over one another. “All in their natural condition are possessed of the will to injure others,” to tyrannize over other men; each has thus to fear the other. Hobbes looks at this condition in its true light, and we find in him no idle talk about a state of natural goodness; the natural condition is really far more like that of the animals—a condition in which there is an unsubdued individual will. All thus wish to “secure themselves against the pretensions of others, to acquire for themselves advantages and superior rights. Opinions, religions, desires, arouse strife; the stronger bears away the victory. The natural condition is consequently a condition of mistrust on the part of all towards all; it is a war of all against all (bellum omnium in omnes),” and the endeavour of one to overreach another. The expression nature has a double significance: In the first place the nature of man signifies his spiritual and rational Being; but his natural condition indicates quite another condition, wherein man conducts himself according to his natural impulses. In this way he conducts himself in conformity with his desires and inclinations, while the rational, on the contrary, is the obtaining supremacy over the immediately natural. “In the condition of nature a certain irresistible power grants the right to rule over those who cannot resist; it is absurd to leave those whom we have in our power to become free and strong again.” From this Hobbes draws the conclusion that “man must go forth from the natural condition.”[236] This is true; the natural condition is not what it should be, and must hence be cast off.
c. Hobbes finally passes to the laws of reason which preserve tranquillity. This condition of law is the subjection of the natural, particular will of the individual to the universal will, which, however, is not that of all individuals, but is the will of the ruler; this is consequently not responsible to individuals, but is directed against this private will, and to it all must be obedient.[237] Thus the whole matter is now placed on quite another footing. But because the universal will is made to reside in the will of one monarch, there nevertheless proceeds from this point of view, which is really correct, a condition of absolute rule, of perfect despotism. The condition of law does not, however, mean that the arbitrary will of one man constitutes absolute law, for the universal will is no despotism, being rational, inasmuch as it is consistently expressed and determined in laws.
Rixner (Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 30) says: “Law to him is nothing but the sum of the conditions of peace extorted by iron necessity from the original wickedness of mankind.” We might add that in Hobbes we at least find this, that the nature and organism of the State is established on the principle of human nature, human desire, &c. The English concerned themselves greatly with that principle of passive obedience, in accordance with which it is said that kings receive their power from God. This, in one aspect, is quite true, but in another it is falsely taken to mean that they have no responsibility, that their blind desires, their merely subjective will, is what must be obeyed.
4. Cudworth, Clarke, Wollaston.
Cudworth wished to revive Plato in England, but to do this after the manner of the demonstrations which we met with in Descartes, and through a trivial metaphysic of the understanding. He wrote a celebrated work: “The true intellectual System of the Universe,” but the Platonic ideas expressed are often in a clumsy form and mingled with the Christian conceptions of God and angels—all regarded as particular existent things. What in Plato is mythical, is here taken as reality in the form of existence; this is reasoned about just as we reason respecting a matter of ordinary fact, such as whether it is probable that the French seek to effect a landing in England, and if so, whether they will successfully accomplish it. The Christian intellectual world is dragged down to the form of ordinary actuality, and consequently it is ruined.
The name of Clarke is likewise famous in connection with his proof of the existence of God. There were quite a number of other English philosophers, whom we do not, however, require to notice; for Clarke, Wollaston, and others carry on their speculations within forms such as belong to a very commonplace metaphysic of the understanding. The manifold systems of moral philosophy which we find taking their rise in England are drawn up from this same mental standpoint; in them the implicitude of mind appears in a form of natural existence, namely, of desires and feelings. Their principles are found in moral sentiments, benevolent desires, sympathy, &c. That form alone is worthy of notice which, on the one hand, represents duty as something which is not foreign, given, commanded, but as clearly belonging to self-consciousness, even while, on the other hand, it represents this property as a natural, unconscious, unspiritual, and irrational existence. Impulse is blind, a solid existence which cannot get beyond itself like thinking self-consciousness. It is indeed true of impulse that its pure activity or its process, and the content, are, as in thought, immediately posited as the same; it has its content in itself, and this is not dead and passive, but self-acting and impelling. But that unity has the form of immediacy only as existent; in the first place it is not a knowledge, it is not necessary, for it is only taken from inward perception; in the second place, it is a determinate which does not abrogate itself, beyond which we cannot get, and which thus is not a universal. Impulse is no more an infinite than is the fixed category of force. Such reasoning takes the impulses in their determinate character from experience, and expresses the appearance of necessity in the same as an inward existence, as a force. For instance, the social instinct is a moment which is found in experience, because man derives all manner of utility from society. Wherein does the necessity of the State, of society, find its basis? In a social desire. This is cause, just as in the physical world a formal interpretation such as this is always to be found. The necessity of any existent fact, such as what pertains to electrical phenomena, finds its basis in a force which brings it forth; it is merely the form of returning from the external to an inward, of passing from the existent to what is thought, which is again in turn represented as an existent. Force is necessitated by reason of the manifestation, we must argue from the latter to the former. On the other hand, the manifestation takes place through the force, for it is the cause of the manifestation; we hence have force in one place as reason, and in another as cause. But in all this there is no realization of the fact that in respect of form there is a transition from the Notion into Being and the other way, while in respect of content there is a perfect contingency of manifestation; we look at electricity in the same way as we look at the fact that men have social instincts, sympathetic inclinations, and so on.
5. Puffendorf.
In the struggle to give to just and equitable relations in the State an independent basis of their own, and to found a judicial system of government, reflective thought put forth its efforts; and this became to it a real interest and concern. And, as in the case of Grotius, it was also true of Puffendorf, that the instinct of mankind—that is, the social instinct, &c.—was made the principle. Samuel von Puffendorf was born in 1632 in Saxony; he studied public law, philosophy, and mathematics at Leipzig and Jena; in 1661, as a professor at Heidelberg, he made natural and civil law for the first time academic studies; in 1668 he became tutor in a Swedish family, which office he later on exchanged for the service of the House of Brandenburg, and in 1694 he died at Berlin as a privy councillor. He wrote several works on political law and history; we must specially mention his work, De jure naturæ et gentium, Libr. viii., Londin. Scan. 1672, 4; and also his compendium De officio hominis, published at the same place in 1673, 8, and Elementa jurisprudentiæ universalis.[238] While the divine right of kings was here still recognized—whereby they rendered account to God alone, or, at all events, were still bound to take counsel of the Church—the impulses and necessities present in mankind were now considered as well. These were regarded as the inward principles for private and political law, and from them the duties both of the government and of rulers were deduced, so that the freedom of mankind might not be interfered with. The basis of the state in Puffendorf’s view is the social instinct: the highest end of the state is the peace and security of social life through the transformation of inward duties as prescribed by conscience into external duties as compelled by law.[239]
6. Newton.
The other side is that thought likewise applied itself to nature, and in this connection Isaac Newton is famous by reason of his mathematical discoveries and his work in physics. He was born in 1642 at Cambridge, made a special study of mathematics, and became professor of the same at Cambridge; later on he was made president of the Royal Society in London, and he died in 1727.[240]
Newton was indisputably the chief contributor to the popularity of the philosophy of Locke, or the English method of treating of Philosophy, and more especially did he promote its application to all the physical sciences. “Physics, beware of metaphysics,” was his maxim,[241] which signifies, Science, beware of thought; and all the physical sciences, even to the present day, have, following in his wake, faithfully observed this precept, inasmuch as they have not entered upon an investigation of their conceptions, or thought about thoughts. Physics can, however, effect nothing without thought; it has its categories and laws through thought alone, and without thought it does not effect any progress. Newton was mainly instrumental in introducing to physics the determinations respecting forces, which pertain to reflection; he raised science to the standpoint of reflection, and set the laws of forces in the place of the laws of phenomena. Regarding matters as he did, Newton derived his conclusions from his experiences; and in physics and the theory of colour-vision, he made bad observations and drew worse conclusions. He passed from experiences to general points of view, again made them fundamental, and from them constructed the individual; this is how his theories are constructed. The observation of things, the discovery of the law immanent therein, and the universal which is found within them, has become the real point of interest. In this way, Newton is so complete a barbarian as regards his conceptions that his case is like that of another of his countrymen who was surprised and rejoiced to learn that he had talked prose all his life, not having had any idea that he was so accomplished. This Newton, like all the Physicists, indeed, never learned; he did not know that he thought in, and had to deal with Notions, while he imagined he was dealing with physical facts: and he presented the extremest contrast to Boehme, who handled sensuous things as Notions, and, by sheer force of mind, obtained entire possession of their actuality and subjugated them. Instead of this Newton treated Notions like sensuous things, and dealt with them just as men deal with wood and stone. And this is even now the case. In the beginnings of physical science we read of the power of inertia, for instance, of the force of acceleration, of molecules, of centripetal and centrifugal force, as of facts which definitely exist; what are really the final results of reflection are represented as their first grounds. If we ask for the cause of there being no advance made in such sciences, we find that it is because men do not understand that they should apply themselves to Notions, but make up their minds to adopt these determinations without sense or understanding. Hence in Newton’s Optics, for instance, there are conclusions derived from his experience which are so untrue and devoid of understanding, that while they are set forth as the finest example of how men can learn to know nature by means of experiments and conclusions derived from experiments, they may also serve as an example of how we should neither experiment nor draw conclusions, of how nothing at all can be learned. A miserable kind of experience like this itself contradicts itself through nature, for nature is more excellent than it appears in this wretched experience: both nature itself and experience, when carried a little further, contradict it. Hence, of all the splendid discoveries of Newton in optics, none now remain excepting one—the division of light into seven colours. This is partly because the conception of whole and part come into play, and partly from an obdurate closing of the eyes to the opposite side. From this empirical method in Philosophy, we shall now pass on to Leibnitz.